The Medical Council’s new CPD categories – Practice Review and Work-Based Learning – offer fresh benefits for doctors. Explore how engaging in audits, quality improvement, and on-the-job learning under the 2025 CPD framework can enhance your practice and professional growth.
Practice Review: CPD That Improves Your Practice
The introduction of the Practice Review category in the new CPD framework transforms the once-a-year audit requirement into something much more meaningful. Under this category, doctors in practice must spend at least 10 hours on an activity that reviews and improves their practice – which could be a clinical audit, a quality improvement (QI) project, or a practice evaluation. The benefit is that this CPD activity is directly tied to enhancing patient care and the quality of your service.
In a clinical audit, for example, you systematically review aspects of care against set standards and then implement changes to improve outcomes. As the Medical Council describes, “a Clinical/Practice Audit is a quality improvement process that seeks to improve patient care and outcomes through systematic review of care against explicit criteria, and acting to improve care when standards are not met”. In other words, by doing an audit you’re not only earning CPD credit – you’re actively making your practice better for patients.
The Practice Review category also gives you flexibility in how you achieve these improvements. You might choose to do a classic audit (perhaps reviewing hand hygiene compliance in your clinic, then introducing measures to raise it), or you could undertake a broader quality improvement initiative. “Quality Improvement is defining a work-related problem, studying the variation, formulating a goal, and then developing a hypothesis about the potential interventions or changes that might work to achieve this goal. These changes or interventions are then tested on a small scale to verify whether they have achieved the predicted outcome.” This could be anything from streamlining a referral process to implementing a new safety checklist in a ward. Alternatively, you could engage in a practice evaluation – for instance, a peer review of your consultation skills or systematically collecting patient feedback to pinpoint areas for improvement. All these count as Practice Review, and all are geared toward making tangible improvements in how you deliver care.
The benefits of the Practice Review category are clear:
- It turns a compliance exercise (the old mandatory audit) into a valuable learning opportunity. By reflecting on and improving your work, you get double value: better outcomes in your practice and CPD credit simultaneously.
- It broadens the scope beyond just clinical audit. You can address whatever aspect of your practice most needs development, be it clinical processes, patient communication, team coordination, or other areas. This ensures your CPD is relevant to your actual practice needs.
- It fosters a culture of continuous improvement. Rather than doing an audit once a year just to fulfill a requirement, the expectation is that you view your practice with a critical eye and continuously seek ways to enhance it. Over time, this mindset can lead to significant improvements and innovation in your work environment.
- For those in non-clinical roles or taking a break from practice, there’s flexibility. Doctors who are not actively practising aren’t forced to do an irrelevant audit – they can allocate those hours to other learning. But if you are practising, the framework nudges you not to skip this crucial type of learning-by-doing.
Many doctors find that completing a meaningful QI project or audit can be one of the most professionally satisfying parts of CPD. You might solve a long-standing problem in your department or discover a new best practice to implement. The new CPD framework formally recognizes and rewards this by making practice-based improvements a core part of your CPD.
Work-Based Learning: Recognizing Everyday Learning
Another major enhancement in the 2025 CPD scheme is the Work-Based Learning (WBL) category. This category acknowledges that a lot of valuable learning happens not in a classroom or conference, but in the daily life of a doctor on the job. By dedicating at least 15 hours to WBL, the framework encourages doctors to capture and get credit for those on-the-job learning moments that were often overlooked before.
What counts as work-based learning? It can include activities like:
- Discussing complex cases with colleagues (e.g., in a multidisciplinary team meeting or case conference).
- Shadowing a specialist for a day to learn a new technique or approach.
- Participating in morbidity & mortality meetings and reflecting on lessons learned.
- Engaging in research or teaching activities as a form of learning.
- Self-directed learning during clinical work, such as looking up evidence to inform a case and then applying it.
The key is that you are drawing lessons from real work experiences. Work-based learning is inherently reflective: “When doctors participate in work-based learning they analyse and assess areas of their professional practice to gain insight on best practice and improvements where possible. [It] aims to make an individual more aware of their own professional knowledge and action by challenging assumptions of everyday practice”. In simpler terms, WBL forces you to step back and think critically about your daily cases – “what did I learn from this situation, and how will it change my practice going forward?”
The benefits of Work-Based Learning include:
- More Relevant Learning: Because WBL is grounded in your actual practice, it tends to be highly relevant to your immediate patient care. You’re learning from the scenarios you personally encounter, which often makes the lessons more impactful and memorable than generic CPD material.
- Increased Self-Awareness: By routinely reflecting on daily cases (especially the unusual or challenging ones), doctors can become more aware of their strengths and areas for improvement. As noted above, WBL helps in “challenging assumptions” and critically evaluating how you respond to situations. This can correct complacency and improve clinical judgment over time.
- Accessibility and Flexibility: Work-based learning often doesn’t require travel or fees – it happens as part of your normal work routine. This makes it easier to fulfill CPD requirements, especially for busy doctors. For example, attending your weekly departmental meeting where patient cases are reviewed can now count toward your CPD hours. You’re essentially turning your regular work discussions into recognized learning sessions.
- Team and System Benefits: Much of WBL involves interacting with colleagues (like team debriefs or collaborative problem-solving). This not only benefits you but can uplift the knowledge and practice standards of your whole team. It encourages a collaborative learning culture in the workplace.
- Better Integration of Knowledge: When you learn something in a textbook or at a conference, it sometimes stays abstract. But when you learn in the context of treating a patient or solving a work problem, you immediately integrate that knowledge into practice. WBL accelerates the translation of knowledge into actual improvements in how you work.
By creating the WBL category, the Medical Council has essentially said: “Not all learning happens in lecture halls – what you learn on the job is just as important.” This is a big plus for doctors. It means your everyday efforts to become better – even something as simple as reading up on a case or consulting a colleague – are recognized as legitimate, valuable CPD activities.
A More Engaging CPD Experience
Both the Practice Review and Work-Based Learning categories reflect a broader philosophy of the new CPD framework: make CPD work for doctors, not the other way around. The updated rules give doctors more autonomy and flexibility to determine which CPD activities are most appropriate to their learning needs, and the new categories help structure a variety of learning methods beyond the traditional courses. This should make CPD more engaging and less of a tick-box exercise.
Instead of simply accumulating hours by attending conferences, doctors can now invest time in projects and learning that directly benefit their practice and patients. The payoff is twofold – you fulfill your professional requirements and you genuinely improve as a practitioner.
In summary, the Practice Review and Work-Based Learning categories offer doctors in Ireland:
- A chance to earn CPD credits for improving what matters most in their own practice (be it clinical quality, efficiency, patient satisfaction, etc.).
- Recognition for the informal learning that happens every day in the medical field.
- Greater variety in CPD activities, which can help keep things interesting and tailored to individual needs.
- The satisfaction of knowing that your CPD time is translating into real-world benefits, not just certificates.
As you plan your CPD under the 2025 framework, think about how you can leverage these new categories. What project could you undertake that would solve a nagging issue in your workplace? What daily learning opportunities can you be more mindful of and log for CPD? By embracing Practice Reviews and Work-Based Learning, you’ll not only meet the new requirements – you’ll likely find yourself becoming a more effective and fulfilled doctor in the process.
